Careful When Asking for Stumbles!

This is a guest post by maxyRO.

Just a month or two ago, StumbleUpon has started doing some spring cleaning by banning accounts that discovered spam websites and submitted them to the system. If you skipped that part of the Terms & Conditions, know that StumbleUpon forbids the use of one’s account for incentivization or promotion of websites. Inviting users to vote for one website or exchanging stumbles is also strictly frowned upon.

The crusade against spammers is not over. Up until now, the only website banned from the StumbleUpon system was Digital Point, a forum previously infamous for the exchange of stumble or diggs (they now forbid it). StumbleUpon goes further this time, by banning websites with certain voting patterns. In brief, the website received votes from the same group over and over again. One example is http://zedomax.com/ (you can try to stumble it).

Here is the dreaded message you receive if a websites has been banned by StumbleUpon:

But what does lead to this extreme measure? If you have used your account so far for promoting your website, both your account and your website might be already flagged. If you’ve been trying to fake a system that delivers impressive results, it’s time to get clean and start using it properly.

• Actively contribute to the StumbleUpon community! Take at least 30 minutes to build up your profile. Try to discover interesting articles, which can turn popular on their own.
• It’s a social website, so start socializing! Make friends, review their profiles, and communicate. Find people that share common interests, befriend them or simply say hi. It will pay off in the long run.
• Prove some altruism – be less about yourself and more about the community. Don’t submit your own articles; focus on the quality and less on the traffic. If you have a good piece, people will be naturally inclined to stumble it.

Note from Daniel: I believe we can summary this on the following way: do not try to game the system. StumbleUpon has an inbuilt feature that lets you send content to your contacts (the “Send to”), so I am pretty sure they are fine with friends sharing stories with friends. But only get the help of friends to get the ball rolling and not to artificially pump your stories; other StumbleUpon users will gladly promote your content if its worth it.